In the course of conducting activities involving multiple parties, a need often arises for people to share information, exchange data or documents, discuss topics of mutual interest, or collaborate in preparing various documents or other work product. It may not be desirable, or possible, for all of the participants to meet in the same physical location at the same time, in which case meeting objectives may be achieved using various communication equipment and networks as tools for facilitating remote collaboration in a multimedia collaboration session. It can be useful for such a session to include a variety of media types that include the participants' voices, video images, shared documents, text messages, drawings, computer screen images, etc.
In such a session it is often desirable for all participants to be shown a view of the computer display of one of the participants. An example of this is when one participant is viewing a document on a computer display and it is desired that all participants be able to view the document simultaneously on their own displays, e.g., for discussion. This process and the mechanism to accomplish it is referred to by various terms, including application sharing, screen sharing, desktop sharing, and application viewing. Such a mechanism can allow one participant to select some region of a computer screen and share it so that other participants can see the region and all of the changes that happen in that region. In addition, some application sharing systems allow remote participants to control a pointer device (mouse) and keyboard input of the shared region. There can be several ways for the sharer to select a region to share in a conventional application sharing environment, including selecting the entire display, selecting all windows associated with a specific application, or selecting a specific region of the screen defined by a geometric shape.
Participants in a multimedia collaboration session often use computers and operating systems that display information to a user using a windowing metaphor familiar to modern computer users. Areas of the display known as windows are associated with different sources of information, such as application programs, file system contents, or system properties. Windows are positioned on a background area comprising much of the screen, often referred to as the desktop.
Many window systems also present a “toolbar” area to the user that is separate from the desktop area. This area may be used for various control and display functions outside the desktop area. Some conventional window systems allow various choices for the location of this area, as well as the ability for the user to interactively change the size and location of the area on the display. This region thus provides an area of the user display that is outside of the desktop and any application windows that are running on the desktop.
Multimedia collaboration sessions often require that a collaboration application be executed on each participating computer, and these applications typically require that an associated window be displayed for control and monitoring the status of the ongoing collaboration session. A difficulty can arise when a participant wishes to use application sharing in a multimedia collaboration session, in that it is undesirable to also share the window associated with the collaboration application with other participants, yet it is also undesirable to remove the session control window from the display area.
Conventional systems use one or more application windows to present all of the various collaborative functionality available to the collaborating participants. The ability for one participant to present documents that all users will see, the ability to annotate on such documents, viewing video of other participants, drawing on a whiteboard, presenting a web tour, are all examples of collaborative functions that are typically presented in these application windows.
Some conventional systems provide a capability to “minimize” the collaboration application window so that it does not appear on the desktop region as a window. In its place, some small user interface element is often displayed to provide a minimum set of functions specific to application sharing. In some systems, this small element is displayed in the application window title bar, a toolbar, in a frame drawn around the region being shared, or by presentation of a small control window on the desktop. However, this approach has several disadvantages.
One disadvantage is that only a very limited amount of functionality can be presented to the user, because the size of the user interface element is restricted to a small area. Another disadvantage is that the user interface element is part of one or more window regions, so it can be hidden or obscured by other windows, which makes access to the application sharing functions difficult. Another disadvantage is that the application flow is confusing, because the main application window that the user is accustomed to dealing with for all other functions disappears and is replaced by a small, hard to find user interface element. Finally, some conventional systems place the minimized element into the title bar of every window on the desktop, which can be confusing.
Conventional collaboration products require users to switch from their meeting interface window to smaller, more limited user interface elements to perform application sharing. Users attempting to access functionality outside of application sharing must stop application sharing and switch back to the meeting interface window to do so. Therefore, in conventional systems a user cannot simultaneously access meeting features while maintaining a full-screen application sharing experience.